FreeDating.co.uk
Review
Learn more about how we score here.
Completely free
15+ years of experience
56% Male | 44% Female
- Completely free
- 15+ years of experience
- 44% Women | 56% Men
In-depth Review of
FreeDating.co.uk
When it comes to online matchmaking services, the largest barrier to entry for most users is often price.
While many of the major dating platforms offer free memberships with basic functions, most of the features you really need to make a connection end up locked away behind premium membership.
Dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble are often seen as cost-free alternatives to pricey membership programs, but even these more recently have pushed users to acquire premium services.
Faced with the dilemma of paying membership fees for a service that isn’t guaranteed to work, plenty of singles may wonder if there is an opportunity to sign up for a matchmaking service with all the features of a premium membership in competitors’ platforms, but without costs.
As it turns out, FreeDating.co.uk is just that service.
In business since 2005, they market themselves as a totally cost-free services that allows users to connect and communicate without any hidden fees. While this sounds great when advertised, is it actually too good to be true?
Table of Contents
Pros
Completely free to use
Simple registration process
Quick and efficient interface
Cons
Reports of fake users
Not as many features or options as paid dating sites
Signing Up for FreeDating.co.uk
Signing up for FreeDating.co.uk is an incredibly easy process. By going to their website, you will be met immediately with the boxes to fill in and create a profile. The website is fairly streamlined and simple, so it will be easy to get started. That’s always a big relief on new dating sites, being user friendly.
Simply fill in your gender and the gender you are interested in, along with your postcode. There are two caveats here, however. The first is that, while there is the option to be interested in the same gender you identify as, there is no way to select multiple genders of interest. Therefore, you will be relegated to picking only one for the time being.
The second is the nature of the postcode. As the name suggests, FreeDating.co.uk is a United Kingdom only dating service, so any postcodes from outside of the country will not work. The benefit of that, however, it that you know for a fact the only other members live close by!
Next comes the minimum and maximum age of the target demographic you are interested in, and the number of miles you wish your search radius to cover. Finally comes your email address and password, two things you will need to become an official member. An activation email will be sent to you, so the service is taking steps to ensure accounts are linked to real people.
This whole process will probably only take you a couple minutes. That’s a wonderful benefit because you can get a feel for the site before necessarily doing a deep dive on your own profile. Once signed up, you can expand upon your profile by adding more details about yourself, as well as pictures.
FreeDating.co.uk Cost
Using FreeDating.co.uk is completely free, although you’ll have to put up with lots of ads on the website.
Member Structure
Somewhat unfortunately, FreeDating.co.uk suffers from a particular shortcoming, and there really isn’t any way around it. The userbase is small in comparison to other giants of the dating industry. It has roughly 26,000 members, which doesn’t offer too many fish when thinking about the larger matchmaking services that can have memberships in the millions.
While this is probably disappointing for some, the service is highly relegated to just the geographic area of the UK, so active members are likely to be more concentrated. Additionally, the free nature of the service could mean more members coming and going at their leisure.
A positive note is the gender distribution. It is roughly 56% male and 44% female, which is a pretty good ratio even for the big-name platforms. Most users tend to be looking for long-term relationships, and the userbase is generally heterosexual in orientation.
This is just the majority however, as the website does cater to different sexual orientations. As for age ranges, the service does not provide much data, but it is known that they do cater to all ages. At the time of writing this review, we noticed several ‘pinned’ articles about dating over 50 on their webpage, but this appeared to be a recent topic of focus for the service.
Matchmaking
The matchmaking process on FreeDating.co.uk is very simple, based entirely around searching for people in your area that fit your gender and age range of interest. Searching is tied to these interests, and there aren’t any options available for customizing your search.
You can rate the profiles that you encounter, and this will increase or decrease their visibility for other users (and your own) when running searches. The only options you will have to later the profiles you encounter are to change your area code, age range, or gender of interest.
Contact Options
The service offers the basics and the essentials for contact, but none of the exciting or special features one might encounter through paid services. You will be able to message other users, and see if they have viewed your message, but that is pretty much the extent of the services offered. There aren’t any options for video chat or alternative communication methods—but with a pretty good success rate of matches found, the basics are all you really need to build a connection.
FreeDating.co.uk App
Unfortunately, FreeDating.co.uk does not have a mobile application as of yet. Hopefully sometime soon!
Conclusion
FreeDating.co.uk is an attempt to provide a premium matchmaking service without the associated cost. Sadly, it struggles to achieve its goal when placed up against the titans of the industry. While the basics for a dating service are here, it doesn’t really offer any features that differentiates it from other affordable dating services.
The low membership count, barebones search tools, and complete lack of matchmaking services, means FreeDating.co.uk comes up shorter than most if a lot of categories. But when it comes down to it, it’s hard to beat free sometimes. Therefore, our biggest recommendation is if you are looking for free dating sites, but want to avoid the big names like Bumble and Tinder—try out Freedating.co.uk.
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